When Derek Fisher’s term as president of the NBPA ends in two years, Al Horford will be a strong candidate to lead the Players Union, according to Marc Stein: “File away Horford’s name as a likely down-the-road top contender to succeed the Lakers’ Derek Fisher as president of the players’ union. The stately Fisher was elected president of the players’ union in 2006 and had a more visible and prominent role during the five-month lockout than any of his predecessors has ever taken on. Although he had to weather criticism over his perceived closeness to NBA commissioner David Stern, Fisher generally earned strong reviews for his contributions to ultimately getting a deal done to save the season, which is why he’ll presumably be asked by his peers to carry on as president in the short term. But when Fisher has had enough — he has two years left on a four-year term after re-election in 2009 — word is that Horford will draw strong consideration as his successor.”

Those agents — Arn Tellum, Bill Duffy, Dan Fegan, Jeff Schwartz, Leon Rose, Henry Thomas and Mark Bartelstein — had been strong behind-the-scenes advocates of decertification for the Players Association but, according to the source, now believe that the time to do so has passed. None of the agents involved returned calls seeking comment, but a source said the tone of Wednesday’s call was far less militant and anti-union than previous discussions. According to sources, the agents are focused on how they can best help union chief Billy Hunter get a fair deal for the players.

Meanwhile, there are no talks planned for Thursday, and several of the principals are expected to observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur Friday and Saturday. That means Sunday could be the only day left to save the Nov. 1 start of the regular season, after commissioner David Stern said Tuesday he will cancel the first two weeks of the regular season in there is no agreement on a new deal by Monday.

The idea to decertify the union has been on the players’ minds since well before the NBA lockout began, and it’s still something that may take place (following in the footsteps of the NFL players). From the NY Times: “N.F.L. players dissolved their union March 11, just before the lockout began, because a clause in their labor agreement would have barred them from doing so for another six months. It was a now-or-never decision. Facing no such artificial deadlines, the National Basketball Players Association put off any decision on decertifying when the N.B.A. lockout began July 1. Billy Hunter, the union’s executive director, said negotiating remained the first priority. But the path the N.F.L. Players Association chose — decertification, coupled with an antitrust lawsuit — remains a weapon in the basketball players’ arsenal should negotiations fail. ‘It’s not off the table in any way,’ said Jeffrey Kessler, the outside counsel for the N.B.P.A. ‘There’s no immediate urgency to that issue. It’s an option the players are actively considering. But they have time to decide whether it makes sense to end the union or not.’ Kessler, who also serves as outside counsel for the football players’ union, is known as a fierce proponent of decertification as a means to gain bargaining leverage. Hunter and Derek Fisher, the basketball players’ union president, prefer to stick to negotiating. Kessler declined to comment on the Eighth Circuit decision’s impact on the N.F.L. discussions. On its face, the decision favored owners. But Kessler, speaking only to the N.B.A. dispute, found encouragement in one part of the decision. The court made a distinction between locked-out players who are under contract and those who are not — free agents and rookies. Because they have yet to sign deals, the court majority wrote, they cannot be classified as locked-out employees.”

According to Roger Mason Jr., VP of the players’ union, superstars like Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, and Amar’e Stoudemire are keeping all possible options open during the work stoppage.

Newsday reports:

Roger Mason Jr. said his cell phone was blowing up when the news broke about Deron Williams’ agreement to play in Turkey next season if the NBA lockout isn’t resolved by September. While the Nets can only stand by helplessly as their cornerstone — who has an opt-out in 2012 — trots off to Turkey, the Knicks can’t do anything about it, either, if Carmelo Anthony or Amar’e Stoudemire have a similar interest in playing overseas.

Mason Jr., a vice president with the players’ union, told us [Thursday] that both Knicks stars have contacted him about Williams’ situation and inquired about the rules and insurance information. Would the Knicks’ biggest stars really consider going over to Europe if the NBA season is compromised?

“I can see anybody doing it,” said Mason Jr. said. “This is what people have to understand. It’s definitely about earning a living, but we’ve already been so blessed, a lot of guys love the game and want to be able to compete . . . I’ve talked to a lot of the star players, Chris Paul, Amar’e, Melo, I think that those guys are open-minded to everything.“

It may prove impossible for Amar’e to seriously consider the overseas option — in fact, Stoudemire’s agent flatly denied that it’s even a consideration — due to a host of injury and insurance concerns stemming from his retina and microfracture knee surgeries in ’05.

It remains to be seen which other big NBA names will follow Deron Williams’ lead, and what kind of pressure this would put on team owners to quickly reach a deal to end the lockout. The only certainty is that the chess match between players and their bosses has truly begun, with DWill having made the first move.

OK, now you’re just getting greedy … DWill’s new bench boss wouldn’t mind coaching Williams, Zaza Pachulia, and Kobe Bryant (who, incidentally, is a Turkish Airlines endorser.) The NY Times reports: “We confirm’ the contract with Williams, said Ergin Ataman, the coach of the Turkish team Besiktas, in a telephone interview Thursday. Ataman said that the deal should become official in the next 24 hours and that Besiktas’s president, Seref Yalcin, would join Williams for a news conference in the United States next week. Williams is expected to report to Besiktas, which is based in Istanbul, on Sept. 1. The season there begins Sept. 27 … If the lockout is resolved, Williams would be free to break his contract and return to the N.B.A., Ataman said. Ataman said Zaza Pachulia, who plays for the Atlanta Hawks, also has an agreement to play for Besiktas. And the club is not done recruiting locked-out N.B.A. players, he said. ‘If there’s a possibility, we’ll talk with Kobe if he’d like to play in Europe with Deron and with other guys to play we can talk with him,’ Ataman said. ‘If Kobe would like to play with us, we will also contact his agent and maybe with him.'”

A bunch of media outlets in the US are now confirming the report that Deron Williams indeed has a deal in place to hoop in Turkey during the NBA lockout, and apparently so does Zaza Pachulia. From ESPN: “Players under contract like Williams would typically need a letter clearance from FIBA — the sport’s world governing body — to play anywhere else. But the NBA Players Association has privately maintained for months that it intends to legally challenge any attempt by the NBA or FIBA to block a player such as Williams from playing elsewhere while the NBA has imposed a work stoppage. ‘If they try to stop him,’ one source said of Williams, ‘the union will fight it.’ The bigger risk for Williams is injury-related, especially after he was plagued by a wrist injury throughout the second half of last season after the Nets acquired him from Utah on Feb. 24. The guaranteed money Williams is owed by the Nets would not be protected in the event of injury overseas, meaning that either Williams or Besiktas will have to make insurance arrangements that protect him against long-term injury. NTV Spor also reported Thursday that Atlanta Hawks center Zaza Pachulia plans to join Williams with Besiktas as well.”

So, even more good news regarding the seemingly inevitable lockout … *Sigh*: “We’d love to avoid a lockout, but we’re unified in the sense of not being afraid if that’s what we’re faced with,’ the Lakers guard said. Player representatives from each team were in town for their summer meeting and were updated on the state of negotiations with owners. The collective bargaining agreement expires June 30, and the sides remain far apart headed into another session Friday. Garnett and Paul Pierce from the Celtics, the Clippers’ Griffin, the Hornets’ Chris Paul and Jason Terry of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks were among the 60 players who joined Fisher at the front of the news conference. Garnett said owners want ‘control.’ ‘It’s unfortunate, to be honest, because we have great momentum right now,’ said Garnett, whose massive contract in Minnesota was a catalyst for the changes owners sought that led to the 1998 lockout. ‘I think the league is, as far as anticipation and the leading stories and the careers that you can follow, you know Dirk (Nowitzki) finally winning, I mean there’s multiple stories that are intriguing right now and it’s just unfortunate that we’re all going through this right now to sort of slow that down.’ The sides swapped proposals Tuesday, but that brought them no closer.”

The Player’s Union took a late swing at the NBA today by filing an unfair labor practices complaint against the League’s owners. The claim, filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), calls the lockout threat unlawful by “failing to bargain in good faith.”

ESPN‘s Chris Sheridan has the details:

Sources have told ESPN.com that the players were so infuriated by the owners’ latest proposal, which seeks a nearly 40 percent rollback in existing contracts over three years and a hard salary cap, that the union would refuse to present a formal counterproposal.

[…]

In a statement, the union said the unfair practices included failure to bargain in good faith, demanding huge financial takeaways from prior contracts without offering concessions in return, bypassing the Union to deal directly with players and threatening an unlawful lockout.

The player’s union was not impressed with the League’s revised proposal last month, saying it was mostly similar to the League’s original proposal in early 2010.

The NLRB issuing an injunction against the a lockout would be highly unlikely, but at least the players aren’t going down without a fight.

When David Stern and NBA team owners say they want to limit player salaries, they’re being very serious. Deathly so. SportsBusiness Journal has the details: “The NBA’s initial proposal for a new collective-bargaining deal called for a $45 million per team hard salary cap along with non-guaranteed player contracts and significant cuts in annual salary increases. The details, spelled out in an April 26 memo issued by National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter, marks the league’s push for a major overhaul of the NBA’s economic model and emphasizes to players an aggressive bid to significantly slash costs and shorten contracts. The memo was sent to all NBA players and was dated just days prior to the league delivering to the union a new labor proposal, which a source said still included the $45 million hard cap but added a phase-in of the cap over a few years. Union president Derek Fisher publicly dismissed the latest proposal as too similar to the original proposal. The memo’s most eye-popping element is the league’s proposed $45 million hard cap, which cuts the current $58 million soft cap by nearly 25 percent. Hunter said in the memo that the NBA projects the $45 million hard cap number with a team’s total salary not to exceed the cap for any reason. The proposed hard cap as outlined by Hunter also would eliminate the current luxury tax provision, which penalizes teams with a dollar-for-dollar tax for the amount spent on player payroll exceeding the salary cap. The proposed hard cap is something the NBA has never had under collective bargaining, but it has become a critical element to owners. This initial proposal, and its steep cut in player cap space, demonstrates a strong commitment by the owners to dramatically curtail player payrolls while also supporting NBA Commissioner David Stern’s mantra of making the league more profitable.”

The latest proposal from David Stern’s team to Billy Hunter’s is a modified version of the NFL’s “Franchise Tag” (and the abolishment of fully guaranteed contracts.) SI reports: “The tag, however, would be very different from the NFL’s version, which allows a team to essentially block one of its free agents from entering the market by binding him to his incumbent team with a one-year contract that carries a high salary based on various parameters. The system the league has presented would not work this way, according to sources. Instead, a team would be allowed to designate one player for preferential contractual treatment, including more overall money, more guaranteed money and at least one extra year on his contract. A player would have to agree to such a designation. It is designed to work as an incentive to get a player to remain with his team rather than as a roadblock to free agency, the sources said. Take the situation between the Cavaliers and LeBron James one year ago. Under the league’s proposal, the Cavaliers would not have been able to unilaterally ‘tag’ James a franchise player and bind him to the team for one more season. The Cavaliers would have been able to offer James various enticements he may not have been able to get from other teams, the sources said. The NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement already gives incumbent teams such advantages when it comes to re-signing their own players. James and Chris Bosh both took less money to sign with the Heat than they could have received from the Cavs and Raptors, respectively. The idea behind the league’s new proposal would be to increase the gap between what teams can offer a ‘designated player’ and what non-designated players can get on the open market … Sources also said the league’s proposal would ban fully guaranteed contracts. All contracts would have limits on the amount of money a player would be guaranteed to receive, and those guarantees would decline during the life of each contract. In other words, a player making, say, $5 million per season over four years would actually be guaranteed less than $5 million in each of those four seasons — and the amount guaranteed would drop each season. The idea is for teams to be able to get out of undesirable contacts more easily and avoid ugly, Eddy Curry-style buyout talks.”

It’s a legal ploy the players are reportedly considering (and that a few of them have even voted to move forward with), and one that could allow them to file a lawsuit against the NBA to stop a lockout next season. It should be noted that a similar move was attempted back in 1995, and it failed. Sports Business Journal reports: “NBA players have begun the process of authorizing the decertification of the National Basketball Players Association, a move meant as a countermeasure if the league locks out players when the collective-bargaining agreement expires in June, sources said. Players for at least two NBA clubs have voted unanimously to authorize decertification after meeting with NBPA Executive Director Billy Hunter, sources said. Hunter is asking players at each club to vote to allow the union to disband, or decertify, as he makes his annual fall tour of locker rooms … If the NBPA were to decertify, it would, in effect, operate as a trade organization but cease to be a union. If the league then tried to lock out players, the NBPA could sue the NBA under U.S. antitrust laws and contend that the league was conducting a group boycott, which is illegal. It could not sue the NBA if it remained a union with collective-bargaining authority for its members, under the labor exemption to antitrust laws. ‘If the owners are going to lock the players out, the players want to have the option of decertifying the union and asserting their antitrust rights to stop the lockout,’ said a source close to the NBPA. ‘This would keep the game going, not just for the fans but for the players and everyone else.'”

Billy Hunter and the players claim they won’t acquiesce to the owners’ proposals, and have their own demands, thank you very much. ESPN reports: “The NBA owners aren’t the only ones looking to alter the landscape of the league over the next several seasons through the league’s collective bargaining agreement. While the owners want to do away with the soft salary cap and guaranteed contracts, the players hope to end the age restriction that forbids players from entering the NBA directly out of high school. ‘We want to go back to the way it was,’ a source from the National Basketball Players Association said. ‘The players have always been philosophically opposed to it. The vast majority of players feel a player should have the right to make a living. If he has the talent and wants to make money to help his family, he should have that right. It’s just a matter of principle.'”

According to a podcast obtained by Yahoo!, Billy Hunter is telling the folks he represents (ie. NBA players) that the League’s claims of woe are nowhere near accurate: “In a podcast distributed to his union membership, NBA Players Association executive director Billy Hunter called commissioner David Stern’s claims that the league has suffered losses of $400 million ‘inflated and inaccurate.’ Hunter is trying to rally the players against a commissioner and ownership that he believes is determined to stage a lockout during the 2011-12 season to deliver unprecedented givebacks and cost certainties with a new collective bargaining agreement. ‘We believe that the NBA owners may have actually been profitable over the past several seasons,’ Hunter said … ‘We are mindful of the potentially negative impact that last summer’s NBA’s cap predictions had on the offers made to the 2009 free agent class and our staff attorneys are currently considering whether the union should file a claim of collusion against the NBA,’ Hunter said. Hunter cited several indicators of why the union believes the NBA is fabricating team losses as it pushes for massive givebacks by the players in CBA discussions. One of the main contentions of the union comes with owners who also possess arenas and television networks, and how money is shuffled around to show losses. Hunter offered Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s legal battle with minority investor Ross Perot Jr. as an example.”

Billy Hunter tells SI that he’s drawing up a new proposal for the owners to summarily reject: “NBA Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said on Thursday that the union is in the process of engineering a proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement and will submit it to the league before the end of June. The league’s owners and commissioner David Stern crafted a proposal and gave it to the players during All-Star weekend in Dallas in mid-February. The players were unanimously dismissive of the owners’ plan to virtually redefine the parameters of an agreement that Stern said will force the owners to lose as much as $400 million combined this year. Hunter said during a news conference in Dallas that he and the players’ leadership told owners they would create their own, separate proposal, though he left open the date for handing over that proposal. Now, he says, he is instituting a soft deadline. ‘We are demonstrating an open-ended willingness and desire to get a deal done instead of just talking about it,’ Hunter told SI.com. ‘This is about good will. Our timing will give the owners the entire summer to review what it is we are proposing and decide what they want to do next.”‘

Derek Fisher tells the NY Times that there’s plenty of time left to negotiate, but nevertheless uses the word “doomsday” within the same breath: “From Fisher’s perspective, the union’s priority is to create a proposal that can be built upon as talks progress. ‘We’ll just continue to push as hard as we can, so it’s as realistic and as serious a proposal as it can be, and not something we send back just for the exercise,’ he said. Fisher said there was no specific timeline for completing its proposal. ‘We know there’s going to be a lot of work involved,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep pushing, and see what we can give back into their hands. There’s not a timeline or any guarantee it will be in their hands by a certain date. We have this season, this summer and the entire year next year before we get down to doomsday.”’

For months now, it’s been no secret that NBA team owners — men stinging from the loss of millions in revenue in the wake of the global economic crisis — were coming for the jugular in the upcoming labor negotiations with the players. A picture of exactly what it is that they want has begun to paint itself.

Let’s just say that things aren’t looking very promising for Billy Hunter and the people he represents. CBS Sports broke the story of the owners’ initial salvo into the battle:

The proposal, sent to the union earlier this week, seeks a reduction in the players’ share of basketball-related income from 57 percent to well below 50 percent, according to a person familiar with the document. Owners also are seeking some elements of a hard cap — a departure from the current luxury-tax system — and a reduction in the length and amount of max contracts.

Owners and players will meet in Dallas during All-Star weekend for their first face-to-face bargaining session as they try to reach an agreement before the current deal expires in 2011. The talks coincide with the NFL’s labor negotiation, in which owners have proposed an 18 percent pay cut for players.

Everyone seems to be in agreement that the players are basically screwed here; even with the growing possibility of a lockout in the 2011-12 season, the Union will have little choice but to agree to the owners’ demands.

For now, however, it’s time for some tough talk from the players. Courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel, here’s Adonal Foyle (of all people):

Orlando Magic center and NBA Players Association first vice president Adonal Foyle on Sunday labeled owners’ newest collective bargaining agreement offer “unfair” and said the owners’ proposed salary rollbacks have mobilized and united the league’s players.

“I think doing that is probably the fatal flaw, because if there is one way to unite the entire NBA against a single thing it would be to go after everybody,” Foyle said. “I think what this proposal has done has done us a favor. It has basically mobilized all our players. Guys are calling. Guys what to know what’s happening and they want to get involved.

So, I am in a way happy that they [the owners] did what they did, because I think now they have awakened not only the players who have been constantly involved in these kinds of negotiations, but they’ve awakened the guys that would have been on the outside looking in.”

You can’t really blame them for feeling this way; certainly not after the disaster of 1995: “I, along with the NBPA Executive Committee, unanimously endorse the quickest possible resolution to the negotiations between the National Basketball Referees Association and the NBA,’ Derek Fisher, the Lakers’ point guard, said in a statement released by the players’ union. ‘Our referees are the best in the world at what they do and they deserve to be treated fairly. Players throughout the league are concerned that the use of replacement referees could compromise the integrity of our games,” Fisher said. “Our fans deserve the best product that we can put on the court and that includes having the best referees. Anything less is unacceptable to our union and our members.”‘

All summer long – hell, all of last season too – we’ve heard about the grim financial outlook for the NBA’s team owners, its players, and various stakeholders. And now, it’s time to get down to business for these parties, as they prepare to faceoff in the ultimate battle, in an effort to (hopefully) avoid yet another devastating work stoppage.

With league-wider revenues in the tank, the talks between owners and the players have begun early and in earnest, as they work to hammer out some kind of compromise, and a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. In other words, prepare for things to get ugly.

David Aldridge writing for NBA.com has the most comprehensive breakdown (you should really make time to read the entire thing):

The owners, according to several sources, are looking for a rollback on the revenue guarantees to players. Currently, players are guaranteed 57 percent of all Basketball Related Income — just about any money that comes from an NBA team, including ticket sales from all games (including exhibition and playoff games), broadcast rights to games, concessions and parking sales, merchandise, team sponsorships and beverage sale rights. In addition, players get 40 percent of the take from the sale of luxury suites and arena signage, and up to 50 percent of arena naming rights.

Owners want to reduce the players’ split from 57 percent of BRI to somewhere around 50 — and more than a few owners want a split in their favor. Either idea, union sources have told me over the past couple of months, is DOA.

There’s also talk of implementing a “hard” salary cap, and possibly higher luxury taxes. Overall, it’s clear that there’s quite a large philosophical (and financial) gap between the players and owners. No surprise there.

It’s a good thing both sides have begun talks this early, but make no mistake — the battle will be long and ugly.

American Needle vs. NFL is being looked at by some as a potentially major legal turning point for all four pro leagues: “Fast forward to a high-definition picture of sports late in 2010. Here is the news of the day, scrawling across the bottom of your TV screen or mobile Web device: LeBron James, who had been expecting a free-agency bonanza when his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers expired after the 2009-2010 season, opens the 2010-11 season with the Cavs, the only team with the right to sign him. Cleveland retains the NBA MVP by slotting his salary into the new league-wide scale…Legal scholars and experts agree that the case is of enormous significance. Gary Roberts, the dean of the Indiana University School of Law and the author of the leading textbook on sports law, tells ESPN.com that the case ‘could easily turn out to be the most significant sports law decision ever.”’

Things keep getting gloomier and gloomier: “Commissioner David Stern said Tuesday that less than half the N.B.A.’s teams turned a profit last season and that some owners had argued that a worst-case decrease in the salary cap of 5 percent might be too optimistic…Last week, the league predicted that its salary cap could drop to between $50.4 million and $53.6 million in 2010-11, which would represent a loss between 2.5 percent and 5 percent in basketball-related revenue. On Tuesday, Stern added that teams could face at least a 10 percent drop in ticket revenue next season.”